THE SYMBOL OF RIGHT TO DIE

By surviving nine years after she was disconnected from the respirator, Karen Ann Quinlan fooled medical science. But she also gave medical science a chance to help resolve a crucial legal question about the right to die. During the time she spent in that coma, many people were given the right to decide whether they want to spend their final days on a life-support machine.

When Miss Quinlan was hooked up to a life-support machine in 1975, that issue was not resolved. It wasn't until a court ruling a year later that the Quinlan family was granted its wish to disconnect the comatose woman from her respirator.

That court ruling paved the way for 22 states, including Florida, to pass laws giving patients and their families the right to decide whether they want to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. These laws don't do anything to encourage or condone anything remotely considered suicide. They simply make clear that dying patients have a right to refuse certain treatment.

It's good that states have faced this touchy issue head-on. Before these laws were passed the matter was addressed case by case in the courts, leaving hospitals terribly confused as to what they could or could not allow.

The right-to-die issue is clearer now. The ethical questions are still difficult but at least now the decisions are in the hands of the people -- the families and doctors -- who should make them.